Alone Together
by NervousWreck96
Summary: Sonic has sworn to sacrifice himself to protect his little brother, no matter the cost to his own life. He never expected the favor to be returned...until one dreary night.


**UPDATE 10/17/2017** **: I have gone over this story, updated it, and corrected some glaring proofreading errors. Now one of the paramedics no longer refers to himself in the third-person, and Tails' arms no longer magically get themselves un-stuck. As for that second chapter I promised way back when, I'm sorry to say, but it's not gonna happen. I tossed a hint toward this possibility on my user profile page, but basically, I decided that the story wrapped itself up nicely in this one chapter and that anything added onto this would be a waste of time. Frankly, I don't even remember what I was planning to do for that second chapter to begin with.**

 **If you read this and liked it, feel free to give my top project, Supernova, a read and review!**

The following story has been inspired by a Reddit writing prompt by /u/RedTeamOverseer:

 _You buy your son a teddy bear. Unknown to you, the bear pledged his life to your son. Every night, it protects your son from the monsters in the dark._

I know I'm stretching it a little with this one, but I hope this works out. There are certain aspects of the Sonic characters' personalities that I want to nail down, but above all, I want to make sure I can write a good and believable Sonic-Tails bro story first.

You may notice that the progression in the story is _not linear_. It zig-zags around, going from normal progression to flashback and back again. Anyone who's seen Lost, Memento, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will be somewhat familiar with this mode of storytelling. I thought the story would be more powerful and affecting this way, but I just thought I'd warn you beforehand about it to stave off reviews about the fic being too confusing to follow. To make it easier, all flashbacks are italicized, and any text within those flashbacks that needs to be emphasized is un-italicized. Within the narrative, there are also references to One Leg to Stand On, a story that takes place just before this on my canon that I've only finished one chapter of...and frankly, the events it references haven't even happened yet in that story. Whoops.

If you have any opinion on this, I beckon you to review. It's the only way I'll get any better.

* * *

Sonic the Hedgehog _hated_ hospitals. He understood the point of them well enough; he just despised the very idea of entering one himself. He had just gotten out of one, and the experience certainly did not change his mind on the matter. And yet there he was, on a wheeled stretcher, getting rolled off of the ambulance toward the emergency room of Little Neck Medical Center.

The force of the straps that held him down felt like a massive boulder weighing down on his entire body. He was strapped down so tightly to the stretcher that he was unable to tilt his head more than the slightest bit. Shrapnel was lodged deep in Sonic's legs from the attack, rendering them momentarily useless. Even the force of the freezing wind against his gauze coverings caused his burns to erupt into searing, flaming pain.

Yet, somehow, Sonic felt none of it.

In the deep recesses of his mind, the physical pain that he was suffering _bothered_ him. It certainly didn't make him feel any better. But the conscious part of his mind was dominated by one thing, and one thing only.

"How...how is..." Sonic summoned all of his remaining strength to say.

Steven, one of the paramedics helping to move him out of the ambulance, finished his thought for him. "Your friend is in the emergency care wing. I'm sorry, but there's not much more I can tell you," he said, trying to disguise his irritation under a mask of concern. This was at least the third time Steven had been asked that question, and given the stress of the job he was performing, it was easy for him to lose count.

 _Tails...if you're in there...please tell me you're okay._

All Sonic could see was the dubious glitter of the torrential rainfall, illuminated by the red and white sirens from ambulances parked in every direction. The downpour helped to wash away some of the blood that was caked all over him, only some of which actually belonged to him. He couldn't see very much at all from his vantage point, but he could still feel. The vibrations under his stretcher were the only thing he had to prove that he was actually moving.

Not fast enough, evidently.

"F...faster," Sonic said, coughing as he spoke.

No response. His voice was too weak at this point to penetrate the chaotic cacophony of sirens, shouting, and wheels clattering on asphalt. If the paramedics weren't going to speed things up, Sonic would have to do it himself.

With what little remained of his strength, he pushed off of his arms and vibrated his entire body back and forth in his bed, as a baby in a stroller would do. His efforts proved futile, as the stretcher merely shook back and forth a few inches from its constant forward progression. The only major effect he caused was the further irritation of the two people who were transporting him.

"I told you this one would be a problem," said Steven.

The other paramedic, Amanda, was not interested. "I don't care if he kicks me in the nose! We are transporting a legendary hero here. Now move it!" she said.

 _Finally, somebody's showing a bit of URGENCY around here!_

Every fibre in his body roared at him to break free of his buckles and charge into that hospital to look for his friend himself. Even if it meant searching every single room, even if it meant he had to limp and crawl and bleed his way through the corridors, even if it meant reducing his legs to wee little stumps to do so, he would risk it all to find closure.

 _No...remember the last time you fought with these people? Let 'em go. They're tryin' their best._

Sonic slumped back in his gurney, physically and mentally spent. He may as well have been in the same position Tails occupied during the battle, trapped in the clutches of Eggman's mechanical claw. After all, both afforded the same levels of powerlessness.

Everything was in the hands of the two paramedics, who were stuck with the unenviable task of rushing him through the emergency wing. He could only look upward, toward the unforgiving rainy skies, and hope.

Hope. Funny thing, that.

* * *

 _They lay their lives on the line for each other. It was only fitting that their mangled bodies would land face-down next to each other on the street._

 _The town reverberated from the sound of the blast. Shop windows, telephone poles, and power lines were shattered and ripped apart by the shockwave alone. Fire hydrants, mailboxes, trash cans, trash, and all manner of flotsam from the streets were torn from their foundations and flung miles away. Bits and pieces of Eggman's machine could be found lodged in brick-and-mortar foundations, on rooftops, and in the lake over a mile from ground zero._

 _And at the center of it all were Sonic and Tails._

 _The fox's idea had worked out about as perfectly as could be expected of it. Sonic was far enough away from the machine so that the explosion barely touched him, his special rubber soles helping him to maintain his footing. By then, he was reduced to using his one good arm together with his two aching legs to keep his face and chest suspended above the street. In the short interval before his hand inevitably slipped on the wet pavement, he scanned the entire area for any signs of another body._

 _45 degrees to his left, it appeared, with an aura of smoke being the dead giveaway to its presence._

 _There was no one else around. That had to be Tails. Regardless, Sonic was going over there to find out, broken bones be damned. Pushing off of his arm, he gradually moved himself into a position where he could finally stand up…_

… _and fell straight back down._

 _Sonic pounded his fist into the street. Why wasn't he moving?_

 _One look down at his legs revealed the answer. The explosion had caused small pieces of shrapnel from Eggman's mech to fly into the air, and it just so happened that one of them – a large, green, metallic object, probably a computer chip or something – had gotten lodged in Sonic's left thigh. The realization dawned on him that the puddle that he was now lying in was not a puddle of rain._

 _Growling, Sonic simply yanked the offending shrapnel through several layers of punctured skin and threw it aside. If he was going to reach his friend, he would have to crawl to him._

 _Weakened from battle, his arms were nonetheless his only means of propulsion. The hedgehog advanced forward one inch at a time, scraping his chest along the asphalt each step of the way. Each thought and impulse concerning his own pain, Sonic used as fuel for his quest._

 _And then he fell again, smacking his face on the pavement._

 _Sonic's spirit was willing, but his body was simply not up to the task. With single-minded intensity, he moved his arms around to attempt to get back up. Only as he flung his shoulder blades in every which direction did he feel a sensation almost alien to him: numbness. Even as they scraped against the asphalt, there was simply no feeling left in his arms. They may as well have not been there at all._

 _No matter. He had gotten close enough to Tails. And what he saw wasn't pretty._

 _The vague image of a creature that lay before him, illuminated only by flickering streetlights, only vaguely resembled Tails. There were spots of orange fur, but they were now the exception rather than the rule, overshadowed by larger patches of black all over the body. Were it not for his twin tails, he would have been nigh-unrecognizable even to Sonic. The fox faced his own fight for survival now, something that Sonic vowed to never let happen as long as he was conscious._

 _Writhing in agony, Tails tried to summon the very strength that he could only look up to Sonic for. Sonic could beat this. This pain would be but a pin-prick to him. And if he could beat this, then so could Tails._

 _But affirmations can only get someone so far._

 _Within seconds, the searing, burning sensation began to consume the fox alive. This was hell. He had been thrown into a pit of molten sulfur, and devils were sticking pitchforks in unmentionable places. His eyes were glued shut by his own fatigue, so for all he knew, that scenario was a distinct possibility._

 _With all of the energy left in his muscles, he convulsed and rolled on the cold, wet ground in small fits. He clenched every muscle he possibly could, an animalistic instinct that the logic center of his brain told him would be as effective against the pain as putting a Band-Aid on a brain tumor, but the emotional center of his brain accepted as the only immediate response. He looked to the cold moisture left on the road surface for desperate relief. No such luck. The combination of freezing cold water, exposed burning flesh, and gritty asphalt only served to pierce his wounds further._

 _The only thing that could dwarf this feeling was the knowledge that Sonic was going through the very same experience. But any hope that it would provide comfort through shared experience died a swift death. After all, that was exactly what Tails was trying to prevent Sonic from in the first place._

 _They could only stare at each other and what they had been reduced to. For all they had sacrificed for each other, including their very lives, there was nothing more they could possibly give. It seemed that the two were all alone. Alone together, floating in a cosmic void where the only language was pain and the only elements were fire and brimstone._

 _Slowly, slowly but surely, Tails sank deeper and deeper into this void. Part of his brain knew the grim reality of this feeling. The rest of it simply didn't care. He was ready to embrace nothingness, escape this suffering, even if it meant…_

 _And then the wail of a siren off in the distance jolted Tails out of his reverie. The ambulance had arrived._

 _As in,_ _ **the**_ _ambulance. There was only one._

 _The vehicle to which their lives would be entrusted was merely a funeral hearse painted white, with a siren and the accompanying ambulance stickers placed on as an afterthought – a bitter irony that wouldn't have been lost on the two if they were in the proper condition to process it. The back was barely large enough to fit one stretcher and body, plus necessary equipment. Needless to say, the emergency services in the town of Little Neck were stretched taut._

 _Two gruff paramedics, with the hardened faces of men who had seen such devastation before, leapt out of the back of the makeshift ambulance without a moment's hesitation, dragging a proper stretcher with an IV bag attached. Predictably, their first instinct was to move towards Sonic. After all, he was everything to everyone who lived on Earth. The all-conquering, charismatic,_ invincible _hero._

If only they knew, _Sonic thought._

 _The paramedics lowered the stretcher, preparing to move Sonic onto it as gently as possible. With all of the fight left in his left arm, Sonic gave one of the EMTs a light shove on the backside. Miraculously, he noticed, turning around to face the hedgehog. "Don't worry. Everything's gonna be all right," he said._

 _It took every morsel of energy just for Sonic to keep that arm aloft. But at least he had this man's undivided attention. Now was the moment. He couldn't turn back time, but he could do this._

" _Th…there…another," said Sonic, his arm flopping to the ground that very same moment, finger pointed firmly at what had remained of Tails. It had done its job; after all, his friend was on the same plane of height as he was. Even speaking was difficult. As that lone word sputtered painfully out of his mouth, his subconscious noted a small pool forming in the back of his throat._

 _The paramedic who kept watch over him – who, from what Sonic could faintly make out from his nametag, was named Bruce – was so grimly focused on the condition of the patient he was taking on, he paid little mind to the hedgehog's gesture. As far as he was concerned, Sonic was_ his _responsibility, and his alone_. _Anything_ _else could simply be delegated._

" _Yo, Larry, scope out that area for me, will ya?" Bruce asked._

" _10-4."_

 _Normally, the business of finding bodies was left to policemen, national guardsmen, and others who were trained for the task. But with devastation on the scale of this, bodies naturally presented themselves to anyone who looked hard enough. When Larry caught a bundle of smoldering wreckage in his peripheral vision, right in the area where Sonic was pointing, he approached the task of investigating it with the same stoicism required of him by his position._

 _It didn't last._

" _Holy shit! Bruce, get over here now!"_

 _Bruce fought with Sonic – whose reflexes were more than he could handle – to apply bandages to his wounds, when he heard Larry's call from off in the distance. Heeding the call, Bruce dropped what he was doing and went off to join his colleague, prompting a sigh of relief from the hedgehog._

 _Bruce thought they were looking at a pile of burned rags. A soiled beanbag chair. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been living. Then again, that was exactly what Larry thought at first, until he noticed two strained, squinting, bloodshot eyes face-down at the bottom of the pile, blinking rapidly in tune with his pulse, the first sign to the two paramedics that this bundle of misery still had a spark of life in it._

 _At that moment, Larry and Bruce came to the same grim conclusion that Sonic had pointed them towards: who needed that lone ambulance more._

 _Larry motioned for Bruce to wheel over the crew's only stretcher, which was still lowered to the ground in preparation for Sonic's transportation. There was nothing more the hedgehog could do now but lie back, soak in the devastation that Eggman had created around him, watch as the merciless rain soaked his wounded body, and wait for his own ambulance to come – if it ever did._

Well, Tails, that was the least I could do.

* * *

Finally, Sonic was wheeled through the entrance and on through the ground floor. Just as he passed through the threshold, Sonic instinctively squinted his eyes. With his body strapped down and his head facing permanently upward, the transition from "overcast night sky" to "brightly-lit hospital front hallway" was a rough one.

Once inside, all of the old and familiar stimuli came calling back to Sonic. The coldness. Not the friendly kind of coldness that you would feel walking into a café on a hot summer day, but the sterile kind of coldness you feel when being dragged into a meat locker. Then there was the fact that every square inch of the building seemed to be painted white, or tiled white, or otherwise colored white. Probably to give that false impression that this was a place of magic and sunshine where nothing bad could possibly happen, Sonic reasoned.

Worst of all, there was that low droning sound that emanated across the entire hallway, echoing off of every tile on the floor, walls, and ceiling. It occasionally varied and wobbled in timbre and pitch, but unmercifully, not in volume. Sonic assumed the worst.

 _That's not some machine. Those are people._

As his stretcher passed by a few of the beds on the first floor, his fears were confirmed. For once, it seemed all too fortunate that he was unable to tilt his neck to the left or right, because he couldn't see what was happening in each room. Still, he could hear everything.

The sounds of terror poured one after another into both ears. Moans. Groans. Screams. Agony. With each room it only got more ear-piercing. Heart-wrenching. Subconscious impulses flared up within the hedgehog. Without even realizing it, his fingers, some of the only parts of his body that were fully functional and mobile, began to twitch and ball up into fists.

Sonic's medical expertise basically amounted to "take pill to stop pain in head" and "put sticky thing on wound to stop red stuff from pouring out". Not that he cared. He desperately wanted to leap out of that bed and do anything – _anything_ – to somehow end their suffering.

 _Damn that Eggman_.

Before Sonic could even begin to regain his composure, Amanda placed a hand on his chest. It was a gentle hand, but not quite gentle enough to avoid sending the hedgehog's abdominal pain into overdrive the instant it pressed down.

"Sir..." she said, "I'm gonna have to ask you to calm down. Any rapid movement will further open your wounds."

 _Great. Apparently I'm not allowed to_ breathe _anymore either._

Suddenly, Sonic's stretcher was brought to a halt. Was this the spot? Was this where he would find the truth about his friend? Emerald eyes perked open…

…and then slammed shut again once he heard a ding and the whoosh of two doors closing together, realizing he had merely been moved into an elevator traveling upward to another floor.

At least he had time to think.

The hedgehog had seen himself nearly drowned, crushed, asphyxiated, marooned in outer space, and beaten to within an inch of his life on multiple occasions. He thrived – no, lived– on this adrenaline, the sheer thrill of dancing with death only to abandon it on the ballroom floor. It was only a matter of time before death finally struck back. But he wasn't prepared for it to strike Tails as well. Tails should never have been part of this at all. All he wanted was to follow Sonic into battle, not out of some poor sense of direction or lack of self-reliance, but because he wanted to. He couldn't stomach the thought of Sonic throwing himself into danger without being there to absorb some of it, even if it meant… _this_.

This was the price of being a friend of Sonic the Hedgehog.

For once, the daredevil looked back to the past, and questioned himself.

 _Was it worth it?_

Mercifully for him, the elevator bell rang, interrupting him before he was forced to ponder this question any more deeply. He had reached the third floor. Tails' floor…hopefully.

The injured victims of the attack had already overflowed closer hospitals in the area, as well as the lower floors of this one. Doctors, nurses, surgeons, and relatives of the injured ran back and forth throughout Little Neck Medical Center like chickens with their heads cut off, desperately seeking supplies, space, and answers. Never had it seen such an influx of patients in such a small amount of time.

Sonic held it together, remembering his true reason for being here.

"He's..." Sonic said. Every word coming out of his mouth reignited the fire that had ignited deep within his body, but more to the point, his soul. With each consonant, he was forced to cough small droplets of blood up into the air, which inevitably landed back on his already-stained face. Still, he pressed on. "He's up here...right?"

The two paramedics, still rolling the stretcher with the urgency of champion bobsledders, exchanged a passing glance. They were paramedics, after all – not grief counselors. No matter how many cases they would ever receive, they had no training in how to handle this sort of situation, especially not with such a case as Sonic the Hedgehog.

Steven nodded his head. It was time to tell him the truth.

"Your friend asked to see you the second he was brought in. The doctors told us to give you the space right next to him," he said.

Steven expected a twitch of protest, a kick, a shake of the stretcher, or something from the unruly hedgehog in response to this news. For once, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Sonic's face contorted into an expression unlike any that either of the EMTs had seen during their three-minute journey. Steven looked deep into Sonic's eyes and saw a profound sense of renewal that contrasted against his mangled, stained body. His eyes seemed to be reignited with a green flame that signified life itself. He looked as if he could jump out of his restraints under his own power – a possibility that the two were told to be prepared for.

The fact that he had a friend – no, a _brother_ – who would go to the ends of the earth for him was of little concern at that very moment. The only thing in the world that mattered to Sonic the Hedgehog was that Tails was still hanging on.

 _He's gonna be okay. He's gonna be okay._ Hope had returned...for a moment.

"I should warn you, though..." Steven continued.

 _Oh, no._

The paramedic leaned in and whispered the final part of that statement so softly that Sonic was unable to hear it. The hedgehog was so busy comprehending the sheer intrinsic power of the words that he actually _did_ manage to make out, he didn't stop to make out what Steven had said to him afterwards. Or maybe Sonic was trying to block out the fact that he actually heard the words, "He's fading."

Before Sonic could stop to ponder the gravity of the situation, his three-floor journey had come to a sudden end. The EMTs turned his gurney to one side and unbuckled the straps that held the bed to the wheeled portion, finally freeing Sonic from his mobile prison. As he was gently placed onto the hospital bed, a whole new group of men and women in sterile white clothing were waiting for him. They scanned the hedgehog's body, invading personal space if necessary to assess his injuries and formulate a strategy.

Normally, strangers examining Sonic closely using tools – especially pokey ones – would set him off. However, this time, he made little protest, especially considering he had been through this exact scenario previously. Besides, something else had caught his eye. With his regained ability to tilt his head, he focused his eyes on one thing: a curtain. Colored white, appropriately enough.

Sonic realized right away that the curtain must have divided his room from Tails'. Like some horribly sadistic game show, its opening would reveal the fate that his surrogate little brother was placed in.

Deep within his tortured mind, a small part of him was afraid to look through. On the other hand, Sonic had accomplished nothing in life by running away from the truth.

"Somebody…open the curtain," Sonic wheezed, before hacking up another pint of internal bleeding. Not one of them was willing to disobey a request from the planet's greatest hero. One doctor dropped the stethoscope that he was using to measure Sonic's skyrocketing heart rate, rushed to the other side of the room, and threw open the curtain before hastily returning to his duty.

The trails of light from the hospital bulbs that whizzed by him remained fixed in his retina, making it hard for him to focus his vision. However, the vague image of a creature that was in the bed next to his didn't match Sonic's visual profile of Tails. There were spots of orange fur, but they were overshadowed by larger patches of black on the head and chest. Perhaps this was someone else, another sapient creature who also happened to have been caught up in the attack.

All fleeting hope vanished when Sonic noticed two bushy tails dangling from the bed.

* * *

 _Little Neck was a small, thriving fishing port…once._

 _But after Dr. Eggman invaded, all of those fish were killed prematurely, along with some of the men who angled for them. The boats they used to do that fishing, along with the piers they were connected to, were reduced to misplaced wooden splinters in an oil-soaked sea. Miles of pristine, sandy beach were burrowed, tunnelled up, and torn apart in clumps of chaos. The air hung thick with clouds of smoke produced by the many small fires that were created throughout the town in houses, residential buildings, and small businesses that had been torn to shreds. Only a few of the smaller conflagrations were lucky enough to be extinguished by water that came gushing forth from broken fire hydrants and water mains laid to waste in the wake of Eggman's machine. The narrow streets were littered with stalled vehicles of all kinds, their owners and passengers having left them behind in the mad rush to escape the destruction as quickly as possible. What once was a hidden gem of a town tucked away on the lower continent had been reduced to a disaster area._

 _So you could excuse Sonic for feeling a bit ticked off._

 _Ground zero was straight ahead. At his speed, an ocean of endless changing lines protruded from the center of his vision. The one constant in his field of view was a barren, ruined patch of land directly at the center, which only grew in size with each lunging step._

" _Sonic! There it is!" shouted Tails, following right behind._

" _I see it!" said Sonic. "You ready?"_

" _Ready!" Tails flashed a thumbs-up at his comrade._

"' _Cause we're goin' in!"_

 _Pure instinct and experience told Sonic the right time to stop. When that time came, he lifted his feet from their endless motion and slammed them into the ruined streets of Little Neck. His specialized rubber soles did the rest of the work, bringing him to a dead stop just inches before he was to become pancaked against the steel frame of his newest nemesis._

 _Standing before him was the latest creation of the E-Series, Dr. Eggman's main line of mega-sized hedgehog-hunter robots. It certainly had all the hallmarks – taller than an office building, stuffed to the gills with ordinance weapons, and created in the imposing, portly image of its inventor._

 _Dr. Eggman, finally noticing the new arrivals, brought his new toy into a full 180-degree turn, first twisting one of its massive hydraulic-powered legs and then the other, in a process so plodding that Sonic resorted to tapping his foot in frustration waiting for it to end. Eventually, Eggman faced the two head-on._

" _Sonic," said Eggman, his voice tinged with venom. "And you've brought your friend."_

 _Sonic turned to his right briefly. A cursory glance confirmed that Tails not only followed him to the right place, but that he was standing right beside him, putting his fists up in a hackneyed attempt to convey toughness toward the enemy. The hedgehog had gotten so confident in Tails' ability to catch up to him that he hardly felt the need to look back to check on him anymore._

" _I should've known you couldn't resist the chance to meddle in my affairs," Eggman continued. The mad doctor paused for Sonic's inevitable inane repartee. However, he was met only by a fierce glare from his opponent. Eggman met the silence with a satisfied chuckle. "Heh. No matter. There's only one Chaos Emerald in this sleepy hamlet for the three of us."_

" _I don't care_ what _it is you want, Eggman!" said Sonic. "We're gonna send you back where you came from!"_

" _We?"_

 _Eggman paused on that question for a disconcertingly long time. The next words came out of his mouth in an alarming baritone the likes of which Sonic and Tails had never heard out of him before. "Yes. 'We', indeed." Those words made him chuckle. That chuckle would grow into a laugh, which grew into a fit of uproarious, hysterical cackling._

 _Acting out of his purest instinct, Sonic grabbed Tails' hand and held it steady and firm, for comfort, for protection, for a little bit of last-minute psyching up before the fight, for whatever it was that he needed._

" _What is he…" Tails tried to ask, before he was cut off._

" _It doesn't matter," said Sonic. "Because so help me, if he hurts you too…"_

" _That's not what I'm worried about."_

 _Sonic sighed. Once again they had reached the eternal stalemate that was their friendship._

 _They turned back toward Dr. Eggman, who - somehow - was still not finished with his ranting yet. "Well, heroes, can you withstand the full might of my…" said Eggman, pausing for the fullest impact. "…_ _ **Egg Ravager**_ _?"_

Ravager this time, huh? Naming skills up to par. _Sonic thought._

" _Just give me five seconds, Egg-breath," said Sonic._

 _One look at Eggman's face confirmed the outcome. All bets were off._

 _In one instant, the Ravager flexed its stainless-steel muscle before the two heroes that it dwarfed in size and might. With numerous clicks, whirrs, and switches, various weapons emerged from the Ravager's limbs. Laser weapons. Gatling guns. And, of course, no E-Series machine would be complete without a battalion of missiles, exposing themselves to Sonic and Tails via camera shutter-style doors on its chest, one for each individual missile._

 _But before Eggman got the chance to use them, he gazed out of his cockpit window to find that Sonic and Tails had already left their starting positions._

" _What?! C'mere, you troublesome pests!" said Eggman. "Make yourselves nice little targets!"_

 _By the time he had realigned the Ravager to attack, Sonic and Tails were already off and running, having gone their own separate paths._

 _The hedgehog had reversed his direction, making ample use of the vast space afforded to him by ground zero, every square inch of it necessary to gain the momentum he sorely needed for an attack. The Ravager was unleashing the full force of its arsenal on Sonic, launching missile after missile and firing blistering green lasers from the cannons on its shoulders. The hedgehog rose up to the challenge, deftly dodging each blast like a majestic gazelle, sliding, leaping, spinning, doing whatever it took, all the while never losing a step._

 _Eventually, the view was too dusty from gunfire and debris for Eggman to see a thing out of his cockpit. He knew there was action taking place outside his machine, he just couldn't tell what._

" _Grrrrhough…aim straight, you lousy hunk of junk!" said Dr. Eggman, shaking his control column to and fro._

" _Heh! Your move, Tails!" shouted Sonic._

 _Sonic had more than gained momentum for an attack; he had successfully lured away Dr. Eggman's full attention, leaving the fox undetected. Hovering well above the action, Tails – reversing every animal instinct he had learned to that point – brought the helicopter motion of his tails to a complete stop. Turning his body forward like a diver from the high platform, he closed his eyes and awaited the surge of wind that was soon to follow._

This had better work…

 _Tails was familiar with the sort of design that Eggman was utilizing. After all, he himself had single-handedly felled similar robots in the past: first in the center of Station Square after Eggman's bomb failed to detonate, and once again on Space Colony ARK after Sonic was assumed dead at Eggman's hands (the latter with the aid of his own equivalent walker robot, admittedly). From this experience, he was able to guess the weak spots on the machine that stood before them now. The hard part was reaching them._

 _As soon as Tails opened his eyes, he realized he was not going down fast enough, so he twisted his tails to give himself a bit of a boost. He timed his attack to perfection – the Ravager was lumbering forward, protruding its massive forelegs well in front of the rest of its body, ideal for somebody who was attacking from the air. Just before the ground, Tails curled his body into his own version of Sonic's famous super-spin, and braced for the inevitable impact of fragile fox body against reinforced steel._

 _He got something else entirely._

 _Right before the moment of impact, Tails landed in something that he knew wasn't the leg of a robot. Whatever it was, it felt like he had landed in an ocean of pins and needles. The fox struggled to break free, but the invisible menace had immobilized him, rising up to swallow every fiber of his body, leaving nothing untouched, in a moment so drawn out that he couldn't have realized that it had only lasted one second._

 _Static electricity. Unhealthy for those that carried as much body fur as Miles "Tails" Prower._

 _The static built up to the point where it propelled Tails upward and out of its own malicious embrace, leaving him flailing uncontrollably through the air. Fortunately, with the help of his two tails, he was able to reorient himself spatially. It came at a price, however: for a moment, he needed to reexamine which way was up._

 _That done, Tails looked down to find out what natural force had just put him through that miniature form of hell. Surrounding the Egg Ravager was a translucent, glowing white bubble of electricity, which stretched all over the entire diameter of the craft, but was strongest and brightest at the point where the fox hit: just above the roof. A groan escaped from Tails' mouth when he realized he had not even come close to hitting the target._

 _Realizing he was a sitting duck where he was, Tails tilted his propellers downward to go into forward motion. Despite their distance, he and Sonic somehow found each other in mid-stride and made eye contact._

" _It's shielded!" Tails shouted._

 _As if Sonic didn't know. He had been watching the same scene play out before him, even as he was running around the battlefield shaking off every homing weapon aimed at him. The setback had forced him to abandon his ambush on the Ravager._

" _Time for Plan B!" said Sonic. If they weren't in a life-or-death struggle, Tails would have taken the time to ask Sonic if there was ever a Plan A._

 _With authority, Sonic pointed toward the skies, away from Eggman's craft. Without a moment of hesitation, Tails diverted from his flight path._

 _Sonic was in luck. An overhanging street sign had been left standing, but all of the actual signage had been blown off during the initial invasion. With one precise, daring leap, the hedgehog soared majestically to the perfect height and grabbed on to the structure with remarkable ease. Aided by hands that were well above the size of those of the average human, the hedgehog swung his entire body round and round on the horizontal pole like a gymnast on a horizontal bar, gaining speed with each rotation. With impeccable sense of direction, rotation, and height, Sonic released himself from the pole at the right time so that he soared off toward the atmosphere…_

… _where, naturally, Tails was hovering above the ground at the spot, waiting for him._

 _Sonic stretched out his left arm to meet Tails' right. The two grabbed hold with an iron grip that seemingly no earthly force could tear apart. With help from the momentum of Sonic's pull, Tails brought the motion of one of his tails to a stop, sending the two into a literal tailspin. With each cycle, the two became a whirling dervish, gaining enough speed for their physical forms to lose all sense of comprehension to the naked eye. And yet Sonic's grip remained unyielding, applying just enough pressure to hang on, but not quite enough to hurt Tails' hand. It was a powerful, yet almost relaxed hold they had on each other, confident in the knowledge that nothing beyond their control would ever tear it apart._

 _Finally, with almost geometric precision, Tails picked the perfect second to strike. After their nauseating centrifugal embrace, the two released their grip._

 _With blinding speed, Sonic somersaulted toward the dead-center of Eggman's machine. Before the doctor could even react, the hedgehog struck down on the cockpit with devastating force, creating a miniature shockwave that reduced nearby windows to shreds. Like a cobalt pinball, Sonic bounced toward the ground with the exact same force with which he entered, uncurling only to skid to a stop along the ground, his soles tearing out several feet of asphalt along the way._

 _The deafening impact prompted Eggman to gaze down over his cockpit window to gauge the level of destruction. His face went red when he fully grasped the scope of what he saw: the once-mighty shield now had a hedgehog-sized hole ripped in it. Visible bolts of static electricity exposed the area where the shield had been compromised, but soon enough, the hole grew in diameter, erasing every bit of the shield until, finally, it was altogether eliminated from existence._

 _Eggman's security blanket had been rudely ripped off. He was exposed in all of his vulnerability. As he clung desperately to his control joysticks, he silently vowed to himself that_ somebody _had to fall for this._

 _Just above his cockpit, he found that somebody._

 _There was no ruined city, no Egg Ravager, no Sonic in Tails' vision. There were only vague, spastic horizontal lines. Two weary tails worked twice as hard to keep the light-headed fox airborne while he tried to keep down his own lunch. As he desperately tried to shake his head back into a state of airworthiness, his mind repeatedly posed the question, "What were you thinking?"_

 _Without warning, before he could find the answer to that question, he felt the cold, hard press of metal on both sides of his chest._

 _He had little time to react before he was yanked backward with nearly enough force to dislodge his organs from their places, only to be jerked forward to a complete stop just as suddenly. The rush of wind at his back was enough to bring him out of his trance. Frantically, he waved his head in all directions to see what it was that had captured him. The answer was just below him: he was caught in the grasp of the Egg Ravager's massive hydraulic-powered hand. There was no escape; although his arms and tails were free, there was no possible avenue to use them. The one time he needed to breathe most, the tightness of the Ravager's grip stunted each breath before it could really start._

 _Even as Sonic raced around the battlefield with the focal point of his vision spinning around at a dizzying pace, his eyes were fixed solely on Tails' predicament. They were so fixed, in fact, that they didn't even notice the ballistic missiles that were approaching him from the rear._

 _Tails, fearful of seeing his friend's entrails spilling over the ruins of Little Neck, followed his first instinct. He shouted out to the hedgehog._

 _Or at least, tried to shout out._

 _Had he been allowed to, his voice would have pierced heaven and earth. Unfortunately, Eggman foresaw this possibility. No sooner had Tails opened his mouth than the Ravager been ordered to clamp its firm, yet delicate fingers down further on the captive fox. His scream came out more as a desperate choke for air. With no recourse left, he shoved his left arm out forward and backward repeatedly with his index finger pointed toward Sonic, hoping that the rapid movement would somehow be detected in the hedgehog's peripheral vision._

 _From afar, Sonic could only interpret this one way. "Hold on tight, buddy!" he said, turning his body toward the Ravager._

 _Tails slammed his eyes shut and awaited the inevitable._

 _One blast._

 _Two blasts._

 _Masonry crumbling._

 _Teeth gnashing._

 _One prolonged groan of agony._

 _By the time Tails successfully fought off his own conscience and opened his eyes, Sonic had been thrown head-first into the ruins of an office building, his body caved so deeply in the brick foundation that he simply would not slide back down. And then worse started to happen. He began to move._

 _Only here did the extent of the injuries become clear for all to see. As soon as Sonic got over the shock of what had just happened to him, he applied enough force backwards with his arms to shove himself a few inches further out of the groove he had made in the wall – hard to do when he had been crucified, in the most literal sense of the word. Though he himself couldn't see it, Tails couldn't un-see the blood gushing out of where the missiles had impacted the hedgehog's right side. Wherever the wound stopped, because it was hard to tell, a patch of deep burns began on fur that had just seconds earlier been as vibrant and blue as the morning skies. But the one detail that Tails couldn't escape was the ironic juxtaposition of Sonic's physical condition and the relatively stable expression of his face. Just from looking at it, one would think he had just been tripped on the sidewalk without an apology._

 _It was one of those many, many questions that Tails had about Sonic but never had the time to ask. Was he truly that calm under pressure? Did he simply not know the limits of his own body? Was he incapable of even feeling pain? Or even worse…was he not?_

 _Just as the reverberating commotion from the blasts died down, a new one popped in – the hiss from Eggman's P.A. system. "Ladies and gentlemen…well, in this case, just gentle_ man _…" said Dr. Eggman. "…you will be the lucky few to see, up-close and personal, the greatest entertainment event of_ _ **all-time**_ _! The ultimate downfall of Sonic the Hedgehog!" He followed by breathing into his microphone to simulate the cheering of a crowd.  
_

" _Heh…typical Eggman!" Sonic said, though it took quite a bit of effort to make sure Dr. Eggman could hear him from his high perch. "Can't just…cut to the chase, can ya?!"_

" _Shut up." Though Eggman's command was whispered, the megaphone sent the message out loud and clear._

" _Not until you hand him over!"_

" _If I were you, I'd be a bit more worried about_ _ **yourself**_ _, hedgehog!"_

 _Before Sonic could even think of making a move, he saw something bright and metallic headed straight for his broken body. Suspended in a figurative sea of bricks and mortar, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to escape._

 _Sonic expected another simple blunt force impact. He got that, and so much more. The good news was that he was out of the wall. The bad news was that the Ravager's other hand had taken him in his grasp. Five mechanical fingers gave him the cruelest massage he could have ever imagined, crushing him, rubbing against all of his sore spots, and finally suspending him off the ground by his right hind leg._

 _That very second, Eggman yanked a lever on his control column. Without warning, Tails was raised another few feet above the scene. By the time the fluent mechanical motion had finished, Tails and Eggman were on the same plane of verticality that they could make personal eye contact. And Tails didn't like what he saw. There was a look in Dr. Eggman's eyes the likes of which he had never seen before, in all the battles they had fought over the years. The smiling, clownlike demeanor was gone. Tails was looking into the face of a cold-blooded killer._

" _Nice of you to join me, fox-boy," said Dr. Eggman. "I thought we could watch this little moment…_ _ **together**_ _."_

 _Sonic waved his arms and shook his head as vigorously as his body would allow, maybe a bit more so, in a desperate plea for Tails' attention. His conscience couldn't bear the thought of letting the raw, eight-year-old fox watch this. A sick feeling emerged in the pit of Tails' stomach once the realization hit. Sonic knew what was coming._

 _And then Tails knew what was coming. And that's when he saw red._

 _With unimaginable fury, he clawed at the Egg Ravager's index finger, the one that cut off much of the circulation to his lower body. Several furious swipes at polished steel later, he had made no progress. With all of his might, he pushed down on his arms with and attempted to squeeze his way out. Beads of sweat poured down the fox's face to match the ever-increasing downpour, as he struggled to lift himself out of his bind. But it was no use. The Ravager's hold on him was just too tight._

 _The arm that quite literally held Sonic's life in its hands rocketed forward at full speed toward the same brick wall that it had just plucked him out of. Battered, broken, and immobile, Sonic gave in to the most primitive animal instinct and blinked._

 _Anticipating it didn't help._

 _At the moment of impact, every molecule of air in his chest was forced out. Sonic tried, tried so hard to force in more, but the Ravager's arm kept pushing him against the wall with all its power. He moved his arms fully to his sides and tried to push off them to buy his chest some more room, but Eggman's latest and greatest would not budge._

Breathe through your nose, Sonic, breathe through your nose…

" _Is that…all you got?" wheezed Sonic._

Something's cracking…I think that rib's about to go…

 _A piercing scream emerged from his mouth._

Yep, there it goes…

 _Tails couldn't watch anymore. The sight of his friend…mentor…idol…savior…brother…the titles flashed through Tails' head as the image burned itself into his memory forevermore. He would give anything on this earth – anything – to switch places with his friend, to absorb the pain that Dr. Eggman was inflicting. Instead, he had his own trauma to deal with – the feeling that he, somehow, was personally responsible for all of this._

 _Learned helplessness asserted itself on the fox. Finally heeding Sonic's advice, he buried his face in his hands, two of the only appendages that were not constricted._

 _The built-in public address system of the Egg Ravager once again crackled into life. "I finally figured it out, Sonic," said Dr. Eggman._

" _Wh…wha?" replied Sonic, who had been given little breathing room to make even one derogatory comment about nose hair._

" _Your weakness. After all these years, it's clear to me. It's not your pea-sized brain, your wretched impulsiveness, your inability to stand still for more than five seconds…"_

Keep flattering me, Egghead.

"… _it's that bond," Eggman finished._

 _Sonic's brow snapped downward. "My…what?"_

" _That bond you share with that…mutant fox. I knew if I played my cards right, you would play right into my hands."_

 _No sooner had Eggman gotten the point across than he felt a clattering vibration in his seat. As soon as he stood up to locate the source, he could practically feel his own heart travel up his own chest._

" _Don't you_ _ **ever**_ _…"_

 _Deep within Sonic, a sleeping giant had awoken. Summoning from some deep, primal well of strength, arms extended fully outward, he pushed the Ravager's palm back with all of his might._

"… _call_ _ **my buddy**_ _…"_

 _Eggman raced to his control panel to regain manual control of the Ravager's arm. But no matter what he could do, Sonic managed to pull the hydraulic press back inch by inch. It was a tug-of-war between a ten-ton automaton and a hedgehog, and the hedgehog was winning._

"… _a_ _ **WEAKNESS!**_ _"_

 _One roll to the side later, Sonic dropped harmlessly to the ground. With no resistance, the mechanical arm extended forward at full speed, only to create a gaping hole in the brick wall._

 _Suspended high above the ground, Tails watched with baited breath._ Come on, Sonic, get up! You've always gotten up before!

 _He had freed himself from Eggman's grasp. Standing back up on his feet was another matter._

 _It wasn't for lack of trying. Sonic summoned up those arms for one more mighty effort to push himself up. They wobbled. They buckled. And finally, they gave way, sending him face-first into the pavement. Dr. Eggman had taken everything out of Sonic, and there was nothing left for Sonic to give._

 _Slowly, one lurching step at a time, the mad doctor inched the Ravager closer to the exhausted hedgehog. Sonic at least managed to tilt his neck upward toward his attempted murderer. After all, if he was going to meet his end on this day, he wasn't going to flinch. He was going to stare it dead-on in the face._

" _You've just made your final mistake, hedgehog!" said Eggman over the blaring P.A._

 _It was zero hour. Do or die. If Tails wasn't Sonic's weakness, now was the time for him to prove it._

 _The fox turned his head every which way, scanning the Egg Ravager for any weak points that he may have missed when he first laid eyes on the robot. Surely there had to be something. After all, Sonic's life was on the line. And no matter what, through sheer willpower, dumb luck, or both, he and Tails always made it through in the end._

 _Still, it wasn't like a solution was going to magically present itself._

 _Or was it?_

 _Out of the corner of his eye, Tails saw it. A thin, white piece of heaven in a cloud of sparks and smoke, the hole that Sonic left in the frame of the Ravager when he took out the shield._

 _An exposed wire. Salvation._

 _If Tails' theory held true, then snapping that one wire would cut off the power to the machine, safely disabling it. It was just that tantalizingly close, just barely out of reach by arm…_

 _The shoulder-mounted laser weapons and arm-mounted guns were aimed squarely at Sonic. There was no time. Tails had to act._

 _With one desperation heave, he flung his twin tails toward the wiring and made a silent prayer. If all he could hit was thin air, it was all over._

 _Success! He hit something!_

 _Unfortunately, he had missed the wire altogether, instead striking a piece of the Ravager's steel frame that had not been affected by Sonic's attack._

 _Before the pain had even begun to set in from the collision, Tails felt the cold, hard stare of Dr. Eggman prying deep into his soul. With seemingly no other choice, his eyes were drawn to the cockpit. Sure enough, the mad scientist's attention was drawn towards Tails. Sonic had been granted a lifeline…for the moment._

" _You..." said Dr. Eggman, pointing straight at Tails. "...almost made a very big mistake."_

" _Huh?" Tails asked._

" _Don't think I haven't planned ahead for you, fox. That wire triggers the self-destruct protocol. If you had snapped it, I would have been blown sky-high! And as we both know, that just wouldn't be fair now, would it?"_

 _Tails paused for a moment to consider whether he was bluffing or not, then threw out that possibility as soon as he conjured it up. After all, he was Dr. Eggman._

 _As if the encounter never happened, Eggman immediately turned his chair back toward the control panel, hovering his finger perilously over the button that would turn the fate of the universe with one push. "Now where was I? Oh, yes! Farewell, Sonic!"_

 _Tails mulled his options. Destroy himself, or let Sonic be destroyed._

 _Half a second later, he came to his conclusion._

" _Eggman!" Tails screamed._

 _Once again, Eggman peered the fox's way, if only just to humor him. But there was no humor in what he saw. Tails' expression would have one believe that he was the one in command of the situation, and there was good reason for that: both of his namesakes were hovering just over the wire. "I'm giving you five seconds!"_

" _You wouldn't," said Dr. Eggman. Though he tried to reassert himself, there was a noticeable stammer in his voice as the words came out._

 _"Four!"_

 _The horror of what Tails was about to do finally dawned on Sonic. Almost instantaneously, all manner of fatigue vanished from his arms and legs, enabling him to gain a temporary foothold. He tried signaling with his voice, but so help him, nothing came out. The distance between the two may as well have been a mountain. Never before had he felt so utterly, utterly helpless._

" _Three!" shouted Tails._

 _Two tails inched further away from the wire, like he was ready to swing at a fastball. Eggman ignored everything and placed his finger on the button anyway. His desire to eliminate Sonic escaped all logic. Just in case he and Sonic never saw each other on this earth again, he flashed one final smile and thumbs up to Sonic. He wanted the hedgehog's last image of him to be a happy one._

 _"So long, Sonic! It's been fun..._ not _!" said Dr. Eggman. The countdown had expired. They had made their decisions, and there was no turning back._

 _Finally, with no clue what lay on the other side, Tails swung away._

* * *

Sonic had prepared for the worst as best as he could, and in one gut-punching moment, he knew that he got it. With the benefit of a headstart on Sonic, Tails had been at the hospital long enough for doctors to place him on life support. A ventilator and an intravenous drip were the only things standing between him and the afterlife.

One of the first things Sonic noticed was that there were only two others at Tails' bedside – one doctor and one nurse – as opposed to the multitude of specialists that were infiltrating Sonic's space. If their facial expressions were anything to go by, the outlook was anything but optimistic.

 _No! Don't tell me they've given up on him! They can't!_

All Sonic could do was watch for any signs of movement from the other side. So he watched.

And watched.

And watched.

Nothing. A full minute had gone by. Tails had yet to move even a muscle. The only signs to verify his continued existence on this planet were the rhythmic, shrill beeping of a heart monitor. Soon enough, even those started to fade away, becoming more infrequent with each passing second.

Sonic couldn't go back in time to make everything better. He couldn't heal everybody in this hospital. He couldn't even move. But one thing he could do was talk. And he could barely do _that_.

"Hey," he struggled to say.

His airways decided they could take no more after that, forcing him to choke up another pint. Fortunately for him and the team working on him, the bed he was lying on was covered in a sterile wax paper sheet that could be pulled off and re-extended at any time.

"Hey," he continued. "It's me…Sonic."

His voice seemed floaty, even lifeless, barely even recognizable as Sonic. There was none of the passion for life that exuded from his very being day after day. He was unsure that Tails could even hear him from his room. That is, assuming Tails was even…

…no. Sonic shoved such thoughts out of his mind immediately. It couldn't happen.

 _It won't happen_.

"I just want you to know that…" He was out once again. Choke. Cough. Mess.

Just as soon as he could find the strength to utter another word, they arrived on the tip of his tongue. _In case we never meet again…_

The thought alone was too much to bear. The words plummeted back down his esophagus, forever to remain unspoken. In Sonic's mind, there was still only one way this could end.

"…I…I couldn't be prouder…of you…"

Gradually, Sonic's true voice emerged from the static of his circulatory predicament. Though a sharp, stabbing pain still resided deep in his lungs and throat, his desperate need to hack for air died down. The hedgehog wasn't sure if it was because his condition was improving or if it was simply because he had coughed up all the blood that he shed internally during the fight.

"And not just for…what you did back there…but…"

If anything ever sent Tails into an emotional rollercoaster, it was receiving a compliment. Naturally, Sonic took advantage of this time and again. To Tails, Sonic's way of showering praise was just another long, recurring teasing joke between brothers. To Sonic, it was that, and so much more. He was never fully sure that Tails ever comprehended just how special he truly was, how much he was capable of, how much he really meant. To think that he never would…that was a pain that cut deeper into Sonic than any of his burns.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Sonic stopped again, scanning closely to see if Tails was responsive to his voice. But not even a finger was moving on the other side.

"…but…everything we've ever been through…you've…"

With each sentence, Sonic heard Tails' voice beckon to him. What it was saying, he had no clue. The words were indecipherable, all muddled together from the numerous conversations the two shared, from the countless experiences they shared through the years. With a small ember of hope burning in his heart, Sonic scanned the immediate area, looking for the source of the voice. Deep down, however, he knew the truth. It was all in his head.

His voice couldn't take any more. There was something in his throat – not blood, but something far more powerful.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Even with burns covering most of his body, Tails looked so peaceful lying there. It reminded Sonic of so many days in the Mystic Ruins, returning from an early morning run through the countryside only to find Tails in his lab passed out on his workbench after another long, uninterrupted night of drawing up blueprints.

More to the point, his face, though scarred across the forehead by flames and asphalt, carried the same neutral expression as it usually did. If he carried any regrets with him, it wasn't showing. Perhaps he was dreaming of something pleasant as the heart monitor ticked down to the seemingly inevitable.

Perhaps _Sonic_ was dreaming. He could easily pound himself on the forehead to find out for himself, but the events of the day had weakened him to the point where his fists were holding his arms to the bed like lead weights.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Argh. This was going nowhere. His esophagus wanted him to stop talking, but his instincts wanted him to ramble on and on. It was time to cut straight to the point.

"I'd…...I'd really miss ya if you went away…"

Beep. Beep. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep…

Sonic's ears flicked at the sound. He was jolted back into life, as if Tails' heart monitor was his personal alarm clock. Once again, he tilted his neck toward the fox's room to see for himself, to make sure this wasn't an aural mirage conjured up by psychological denial.

The monitor itself verified what Sonic was hearing. A green trail of light moved from left to right on the screen, shooting upward in perfect synchronization with each beep. If its readings were to be believed, Tails' heart rate had returned to what was considered normal – that was to say, roughly half of Sonic's at that particular moment. The hedgehog let out a gasp that turned out to be more of an excited gagging noise. He would be out of his bed and through that curtain in a split-second if one of the staff wasn't busy wrapping his upper legs in bandages.

His eyes were peeled. If Tails was going to start waking up, now was the time.

And then it happened. Out of the corner of Sonic's eye, a movement.

 _Did I just see his finger twitching?_

Sonic rubbed his eyes vigorously, just to make sure this also wasn't some kind of mistake. After all, staring at the same static image for five minutes is bound to have some effects on the eye. No…no mistake. Evidently, the two doctors that were in the room with Tails had been aware of the same things, and hurried to his side to check up on his vital signs.

Suddenly, Tails' whole body shuddered with a frightening jolt. All of the pain that he was enduring as he entered his coma had come back to him the moment he exited it. One limb after the other lifted slightly off of his bed, only to fall back down again like a rock, as he instinctively tried to find out which parts of his body he could move without erupting into ceaseless agony.

His eyelids began to slide open slowly and deliberately, one micrometer at a time, and then snap shut in an instant. The harsh glare of the hospital bulbs upon the floor was too much for the fox's eyes and mind to absorb all at once. And so the pattern went for a full minute, with his eyelid gaining an extra millimeter or so on each pass. Once Tails finally summoned the strength to keep them open halfway, Sonic was overcome by conflicting desires to look towards and look away. Before, when the two looked at each other eye-to-eye, whereas Tails would see determination, resolve, and boundless spirit in Sonic's green, Sonic would see a childlike trust, loyalty, and innocence in Tails' blue. He would hate to look into those eyes and see that innocence shattered.

Carefully, Tails turned his neck to the right. Those eyes were pointed straight at Sonic.

Of course. After all, it was Tails who wanted Sonic here in the first place.

He finally spoke, or at least moved his lips. The two beds weren't close enough for Sonic to hear what came out of Tails' mouth, if anything. Still, he could read lips well enough to realize that Tails was trying to call Sonic by name. The hedgehog shoved aside any feelings of his own pain and forcibly cleared his throat. He needed all of it in order for Tails to hear him.

"Yeah?" asked Sonic, with as much force as he could possibly muster.

The words fluttered out of Tails' mouth like a wounded duck. "We…we made it."

For the first time in what seemed like a year, Sonic smiled. His muzzle could barely contain the sheer width of his grin. Suddenly, Sonic's physical pain seemed to wash away. And as Tails shot back that very same smile, the hedgehog couldn't help but think that his friend had experienced that very same feeling.

Recovery would take time. Sonic knew full well that the hospital wouldn't simply let them leave on their own terms. And even if he could, Tails would need the time far more than Sonic did. That space that they shared was going to be their home for quite a while, whether Sonic liked it or not. But it was theirs together. Their situation, their pain, their struggles, all were part of a shared experience that was made all the more painful by their connection, but in that same connection lay the strength to overcome it. No pain was unbearable, no struggle too perilous, no tortured memory too traumatic, as long as they had each other.

They had indeed made it.

But Sonic still had plenty of questions to ask.


End file.
